


My Heart Wants To Come Home (To You)

by cafephan



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: 2012!Phan, Angst, Breakup
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-11
Updated: 2016-01-11
Packaged: 2018-05-13 06:11:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5697946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cafephan/pseuds/cafephan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which a relationship breaks down, and one-sided effort just isn’t enough anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Heart Wants To Come Home (To You)

[**Click here for the playlist I compiled for this fic, containing songs from both perspectives!** ](https://open.spotify.com/user/parodyvamps/playlist/6vJ9Xj7mdC6Ns0XCTJXlAB)(I posted on tumblr I want to start making playlists for all my fics from now on so this is your warning, I thought it would add to the ambience and your reading experience, as you can get a better idea where some inspiration for the fic comes from!)

\---------------------------------------------------------------------

Their relationship was a battle, a counterbalance weighted against them, and Phil was suffering with the consequences. In his appearance, in his personality, in his entirety.

He didn’t notice the beginning, telltale signs, not until it was ultimately too late. When they would lay in bed, on each edge of the mattress, as far from each other as possible. Dan would turn away, leaning on his side, shoulders tensed and occasionally a sigh would slip from his lips.

“I love you” Phil whispered, and previously Dan would jump into reciprocity, but now he stayed still, frozen almost, and muttered something resembling a less than half-hearted ‘you too’ before digging his head deeper into the pillow and clenching the duvet with his hands, balling them into fists and pulling the duvet up to his chin.

The next morning he awoke alone, Dan hadn’t bothered to wake him up like he used to, he used to wake Phil up with a gentle kiss on his forehead, then a trail of butterfly kisses down his jawline, and Phil would open his eyes to be greeted with Dan’s wide grin. Now, his hands outstretched for what he no longer had, and his fingers attempted to grasp where Dan was previously laid, the air icy cold.

He padded into the living room, wiping his red-rimmed eyes as he did so. Dan was sat on the sofa with a bowl of cereal, watching a rerun of a sitcom they had binge-watched a few months before. He thought maybe Dan would have fixed him a bowl of cereal too, like he used to, but no. The box of cereal was on its side on the kitchen counter, a few stray pieces littering the countertop, and Phil gathered them into his bowl, every few seconds casting a look back to the living room, where Dan hadn’t even bothered to look once. Phil took the liberty of slamming the box back down with extra force, but still Dan didn’t turn his head.

“Is this the one where they go on holiday?” Phil asked as he sat beside Dan, gesturing to the television screen, pretending not to notice how the brunet shifted further away from him as he sat down.

Dan nodded monotonously, expression deadpan.

“Do you think we should start looking at flights to Japan? You know, like we talked about?” he tried initiating conversation again, hoping their shared dream of visiting Japan would break Dan’s icy exterior that he had built up for a reason Phil didn’t understand.

Dan shrugged, his focus never leaving the television screen.

Phil bit his lip and he dipped his head as he blinked away a few tears that were threatening to fall. Dan still didn’t spare him even a side-eyed glance whilst Phil continued to sniffle as he fought back tears, up to the point he was louder than the characters onscreen.

Dan switched the tv off and smacked his bowl on the coffee table, sending the spoon clattering against it due to the force. The noise was far too unnecessarily extreme for how early in the morning it was, and that was what pushed Phil over the edge. Dan had noticed him crying, and his reaction was to leave.  

As Dan was walking back to his room, Phil took his chance. He was at his lowest already, he had nothing to lose.

“Dan,” Phil called, and he heard an audible sigh from Dan’s direction at the sound of his name. “I’m going to ask you something, and I want an honest answer, alright?”

Dan rolled his eyes and crossed his arms across his chest, reluctantly turning around.

Phil shakily stood up from the sofa and unsteadily made his way over to Dan, stumbling occasionally due to his paranoia, fear, and downright upset affecting his equilibrium. He made eye contact with Dan, and the eyes that were once filled with such love, such passion, now just reflected the opposite. Cold.

He tried to pose the question four times, but stumbled over the first syllable every time. “Do,” Phil shook his head as he tried to compose himself, but tears were again spilling thick and fast down his cheeks.

“Do you”

“Do I fucking what, Phil?” Dan interrupted, voice harsh and cutting. Slicing through any hope Phil had for the answer he desired.

“Do you still love me?” Phil asked, voice small and vulnerable. He was handing his metaphorical heart over to Dan on a silver platter, and he could either heal it or break it all apart and shatter it wholly, and it terrified Phil to think that there was pretty much a guarantee for the latter.

Dan remained silent for a few seconds, and he pressed his lips together, but never broke eye contact with Phil. Phil didn’t bother to wipe away his tears, he was entranced in the moment, hanging on Dan’s answer, praying he was also replaying all of their happy memories through the past three years.

But Dan didn’t answer. He merely turned and continued walking to his room, and slammed the door behind him. Phil was left alone in the corridor, and he sunk to his knees, placing his head in his hands as he sobbed louder than ever, a few tears slipping between his fingers and dotting the glossy wood flooring.

\--

The day after was when Phil came home to an eerily quiet flat. He had only left to fetch the week’s shopping, he was gone a half hour at most, and he couldn’t stop the carrier bags slipping from his grip as he looked down the corridor.

Milk spilled over the linoleum and bars of chocolate smashed into little pieces as Phil took a deep breath and set down the corridor, stopping at his door, and the pile of mementos that he kept in Dan’s room. They were piled messily, evidently thrown due to the cracks in some objects and the wrinkling of the clothes, and at the top of the pile was the teddy bear that Phil had bought for Dan for their two-year anniversary. It was one of those cheesy, cliché bears holding the red-velveteen banner with ‘I Love You’ in a swirly font, but just seeing it brought back the memory of Dan’s reaction. He giggled at Phil’s predictability and shook his head as he smiled widely, and sat the bear on his lap as he wrapped his arms around Phil’s neck and kissed him deeply, like he used to do regularly.

Phil couldn’t help himself, and picked the bear up, and clutched it to his chest. It still vaguely smelt like Dan and that was what made him hug the stuffed toy that much tighter, but tears pricked at his eyes once again once he loosened his grip on the bear, and noticed that the banner had been forcibly ripped from one of its paws, and evidently attempted to have been ripped vertically over the word ‘love’.

\--

It was the third day that Phil came home to two pairs of shoes at the front door, neither of which were his own.

He hadn’t spoken to Dan since he had ignored his question and stormed off, Dan had stayed in his room and Phil had stayed in his own, though Phil had taken to placing his hand against the wall in the twilight hours, just hoping that maybe Dan was reaching out for him too.

The flat was silent, and Phil hated it. Laughter once echoed from the plastered walls, and now they only echoed his helpless sobs through the night, to which Dan had never once bothered to check on. He was alone, and the mystery of the shoes by the door beside Dan’s mocked him, right up to the point Dan returned, at four in the morning.

Phil hadn’t slept in days, and had taken the hours that should be spent sleeping to catch up on various tv shows he had given up on long ago, but with nothing to do and nobody to care, he felt as if he had no other choice.

Phil didn’t let himself acknowledge Dan in the slightest, not even when Dan flopped down on the complete opposite end of the sofa in a huff, resting one arm on his leg and the other on the arm of the sofa as he tuned into the show that Phil only regarded as background noise by this point.

It didn’t take long for the scent of unfamiliar aftershave to waft its way over from the other side of the sofa. It smelt cheap, a polar opposite to what Dan insisted on wearing, and Phil swallowed back the lump in his throat as he cast a subtle side-glance over to the man with the dishevelled hair, purple-spotted neck and crumpled clothes.

“Good night?” he asked, voice surprisingly steadier than he would have thought, and Dan sighed.

“Don’t you fucking dare sit there and give me the third degree” Dan replied through gritted teeth, and Phil’s hands clenched into fists, but he still didn’t lose his cool.

“How was he” he said it as more of a statement than a question, and he felt Dan stand back up, and heard pounding footsteps walk around the sofa behind him.

“You know what, Phil? He was fucking _amazing_ ” Dan sniggered, leaving Phil a heaving mess on the sofa, breaking down completely as soon as Dan slammed his door. He didn’t mean to let Dan have all the power, he was trying his hardest, but, like Dan had told him in not so many words, he wasn’t enough. His love wasn’t enough.

\--

When he attempted to sleep at night, he would only lay on what used to be Dan’s side, sobbing into the pillow where his head once rested, clinging on to what little he had left.

When he heard Dan filming in his room or elsewhere in the flat, Phil would stay well away, he couldn’t face another argument, another loss. He had lost his dignity long ago, he knew, but he had a minuscule wisp of hope left in him that Dan just might still love him, and he didn’t want to extinguish it by asking.

And so he didn’t.

He watched Dan’s liveshows anonymously to see how he would respond to questions about them, and the reaction was always frosty. Dan was always secretive about his private life, and rightfully so, but he had never denied their friendship, regardless of the fact they were – or, used to be – far beyond that. He would either skip the question or divert the topic of conversation elsewhere, and that would usually be when Phil closed his laptop and retreated under his duvet with the lights off.

\--

It was a month or two later, after countless cold receptions and petty arguments, that Phil built up the courage. It took a trip home and a visit with old friends to give him the self-assurance he needed to know that he was worthy, of self-respect and of Dan’s respect.

“Technically, he’s never said that he didn’t love you, or that you’re not together anymore” a friend noted wistfully after Phil had recounted the events to them, and that was what Phil was now clinging to as he walked down the corridor to Dan’s room.

His fist ghosted in front of the door, ready to knock, until he heard Dan speaking to someone. He was answering mismatched questions, and Phil soon realized he was doing another liveshow. Phil decided that if Dan were to talk him down again to the viewers, make whatever they had seem worthless, he would step in.

It was no doubt that Phil was still unequivocally in love with Dan, and he would do anything for things to go back to how they were, he would even gloss over Dan’s hook-ups.

Phil found himself biting his fingernails as he listened to Dan answer various liveshow questions, but his interest was well and truly piqued a few minutes in.

He heard Dan sigh, and a few seconds of silence, before he snapped in response to the viewer’s question.

“Phil and I aren’t joined at the hip, you know”

Phil’s arms dropped to his sides, and he slid down the wall beside Dan’s door. They _used_ to be joined at the hip, it was their thing. Inseparable, a bond so unbreakable, a living, walking cliché. But that was them, it was their relationship, where they now lay in tatters.

Phil often thought of the relationship in terms of poetic conceit, an inevitability of everything good coming to an end. A play having its final curtain call, a concert playing its last chord, the last petal falling from the bouquet of flowers that Dan had bought for Phil one random Monday afternoon the month before.

The thought made him tug at his hair out of stress and nerves, he was replenished in terms of socialisation, but his clarity had never stopped being Dan, and it was doing more bad than good. Everything Phil did was with consideration and respect for Dan, which was not reciprocated in the slightest. Whatever courage and determination he had deteriorated at the sound of Dan’s voice.

As he rested his head against the wall, defeated, letting the all too familiar tears stream down his cheeks, he had no choice but to listen to Dan’s final liveshow answer before Dan slammed the laptop shut and silence fell upon the flat.

“No, Phil and I are not together. Nor will we ever be”

**Author's Note:**

> Wow my first fic of 2016 is my first attempt at 2012…
> 
> But anyway, this is really a filler fic because I have three long fics in the process of being written as well as some other cool stuff so this is just a placeholder, if you will, but I hope you enjoyed it nonetheless! (let me know if you did)
> 
> As you can tell, I can’t write very good angst so that’s a thing


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